Disclaimer: I don't own anything!

Author's Note: I just attended a performance at Cirque du Soleil for the first time and it was incredible.

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And even if you were in some prison, the walls of which let none of the sounds of the world come to your senses - would you not then still have your childhood, that precious, kingly possession, that treasure-house of memories? ~Rainer Maria Rilke

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Yuan groaned and let himself fall back onto the cool, tiled floor. "I think we ate too much."

Kratos looked over at him. "You think?" He asked dryly, a hand to his own stomach.

There are empty platters scattered through the kitchen, crumbs dusting the floors and counters. It all had been the leftovers of a dinner party in celebration of the new year. Yuan had been one of the slaves to help serve the drinks. He'd been told to hold the pitcher the entire duration of the dinner and his hands had been nearly frozen and trembling from the strain by the end of it. But even with all that, he'd noticed just how little Kratos ate, his eyes never lifting from the plate in front of him, hardly speaking unless it was in response to a question.

Yuan had been clearing up the plates, trying not to fall asleep at the same time, when Kratos had crept downstairs. He looked surprised to find Yuan there.

"I thought everybody would be asleep by now."

Yuan shook his head. "Nope. There are enough dishes here to make a fortress out of." He eyed his friend. "Why are you here?"

Kratos' stomach grumbled then and he ducked his head, embarrassed. "I was hungry."

"I can see that." Yuan glanced around. Most of the other slaves were almost done with their portion of the work. The tables were cleared, the floors swept, the dishes already dry were being put away and everyone was sort of stumbling back towards the slave quarters. Yuan looked at the clock. It was after midnight and they'd all have to be up in a few hours.

"C'mon. Let's steal some leftovers."

And here they were, more than an hour later, laying on their backs with sated stomachs and staring up at the ceiling.

"I don't think I'll be able to eat for days." Yuan said, yawning.

"I don't think I'll be able to get up from here for days." Kratos was already dozing off a little. He could still hear Yuan, could still find the energy to reply, but it was getting harder and harder to keep his eyes open.

Yuan pushed him with what little strength the half-elf could muster. "C'mon. We can't fall asleep here. The cook'll have our hides if we do."

Technically, the cook would only have Yuan's hide. Kratos was safe. He was human, was learned, had money, had his freedom.

But Yuan was learned now too, or was learning. And every night before he fell asleep, he found himself murmuring the alphabet and his numbers over and over until he could see them floating in the darkness above him. And if that didn't get him to sleep, he'd start saying his words and spelling them, over and over again, like a litany.

But Kratos sluggishly pushes himself up and simply blinks at the world for a few minutes as he works himself back to full awareness. "Yeah, that doesn't sound fun."

Yuan barked a laugh. "It isn't." He held out his hands, limbs suddenly feeling like they really didn't want to work. "Help me up?"

Kratos obliged, standing so he can grasp the half-elf's hands and pull him to his feet. Kratos looks around, taking in the moonlights spilling through the windows across the floor, gilding the counters and cabinets with silver. He glances at the clock over the stove. "I don't think I've ever been up this late before."

"I have." Yuan said. They're sort of, not quite, leaning on each other as they wander out of the kitchen. Across the hall from the kitchen is the laundry room and a linen closet. The back door is at the very end of the hallway and the other end goes out into the dining room.

"Really? Father never lets me stay up late."

Yuan has seen Kratos' father, has seen the stern set of the jaw and the no-nonsense stance. Sometimes, he wonders how such a man could have a son so very different from himself. "Mama never really cared what I did."

It's a gap that they're both all too aware of. They feel it, the lack of a father, even though the man had been caring and kind when he'd been there. The lack of a mother that Kratos can't remember.

And Kratos is suddenly very very aware of just how constricting being a slave would be for a person like Yuan. A person who had had his world at his feet, small as it might have been. A person who enjoyed running and climbing and listening to old stories of days that were slowly fading back into the sands of time.

"…What was your village like?" Kratos finds himself asking suddenly.

Yuan blinks at him for a moment, surprised, before he looks away. "…Nothing special."

Kratos stares at him. "It had to be something special. It was your home."

"It was a place I lived. That's it."

Kratos swings Yuan around to look at him. "How can you say that?"

Yuan's hold on his temper—already precarious because he'd had to be bowing and scraping and serving all night—snaps. "Because home doesn't get invaded by humans. Home doesn't have friends and family being marched out it in chains. Home doesn't have bombs falling out of the sky and it certainly doesn't go up in flames."

Kratos can't meet Yuan's eyes. "But it was still home once, wasn't it?"

Yuan is breathing a little hard and is surprised to find that there were traces of fear inside him. He isn't even sure why the fear is there. Kratos hadn't ever once shown anger, real anger, at him, but apparently, even months of knowing Kratos, of being friends with him, couldn't squash ten years of being told how evil humans were, of seeing them destroy his village.

"…Yeah. It was."

Kratos hesitates before asking the next question, not wanting to hear Yuan snap again. "Could you tell me about that home? The real one? The Before one?"

An instinctive part of Yuan wants to tell him no. Wants to keep his memories, his precious precious memories of his hometown, the one thing that no one could ever take away, all to himself. But this is Kratos, his best—and only—friend, and aren't you supposed to share those sorts of things with a best friend? Yuan doesn't know. He's never had a best friend before.

"…It always smelled of pomegranates and sheep. And the street performers would always be by the well in the center of the town. If I climbed up the pomegranate trees, all the way up the cliff, I could see the fields. Sometimes, it looked like it went on forever."

"Where did you hear your stories? Did your mom tell them to you?" It sounds like something a mom was supposed to do, not that Kratos would know.

Yuan finds it difficult to remember a time before Mama stayed in bed all day, before she fell apart at the news of Dehua and Kail's deaths. After that, there had been no more good days.

He swallows before replying, "No. It was old man Duinser who would always tell us stories, but only if we asked real nice."

They're past the dining room, out into the foyer. Their voices are instinctively low because it's not far to Kratos' father's study and if the cook would have their hides, he would have the rest of them for being out so late. And Yuan didn't want to imagine what he'd say when he found his son consorting with a half-elven slave.

Kratos waits a few minutes to see if Yuan adds anything else, but he doesn't. But Kratos likes the insight, likes the mental picture he's painted of Yuan's hometown, even if he probably had all the details wrong.

He doesn't know what to say to the information, if he should say anything at all. Kratos rubs his arm nervously before saying, "…Tomorrow, I have something to show you."

Yuan can tell by looking at him, at the uneasy way he was standing, that it's something Kratos isn't entirely comfortable with sharing. Like his memories of home. So Yuan nods. "Okay."